Megan Williams

Megan Williams (born 1956) is a contemporary artist who creates wall drawings, three-dimensional drawings, and traditional sculpture.

Early life and education Born in 1956 in Cleveland, Ohio, in the U.S., Williams earned a B.F.A. in 1978 from the California Institute of the Arts. As of 1990, Megan Williams was married, and had a son.

As early as 1983, art critics explicitly reviewed Williams' work favorably. John Russell of The New York Times called her an "artist of true quality". By 1993, Roberta Smith of The New York Times characterized her work as "figurative political art", comparing the "animated autonomy of her lines" with that of Betsy Friedman Murunashi-Lederman and Nicole Eiseman. Williams herself explained her wall art: "I see an entire room as a blank sheet of paper, allowing the viewer to exist in it, rather than outside of it. It places the work in closer proximity to the psychological space with which we surround ourselves." In 2008 he observed that Williams' practice was "turning the inner outward", a defining characteristic of her work, noting she "substitutes the goofy for the surreal, effecting what is indeed a kind of expressionism, but one that is as self-effacing and comic as it is assertive and heroic." Miles identified two modes that Williams uses: the first, lighthearted, optimistic contemplation; and the second, humor in a cartoon format to suggest "violence and angst". A gallery's 2008 description of her work said it was "populated by careening forces and dyspeptic explosions," noting one work was "sci-fi and apocalyptic", an "outburst of atomic proportions".

Selected exhibitions Williams has exhibited at multiple venues: Arena 1 Gallery, Santa Monica, "On the Wall", 2011 Carl Berg Gallery, Los Angeles, "Purge, 2008" Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. The Drawing Center, New York, "Selections, Fall 1991" Japanese American National Museum Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art Orange County Museum of Art Sweeney Art Gallery Sweeney Art Gallery, UCR ArtsBlock, "Figurative Language"

1997 California Community Foundation's Fellowships for Visual Artists